ACFE Insights

Joanna Kardys-Stone is a CPA whose work focuses mostly on financial statement audits. She began her studies for the CFE Exam at the end of 2017 but got busy and distracted over the holidays. For Joanna, the 90-Day CFE Exam Challenge came at the perfect time for her to recommit to her goal.

Joanna earned her CFE credential in June, and she has some tips and advice to share with anyone else who is considering signing up for the challenge.

We all know this well-worn concept: An organization’s reputation takes years to develop, but it can collapse overnight if it didn’t originally possess integrity from the top down. “It took 160 years for Siemens to build a reputation and only five minutes to ruin it,” said Dr. Andreas Pohlmann, the former chief compliance officer of Siemens, at the 29th Annual ACFE Global Fraud Conference in June. A little ill-gotten profit means nothing if a business has to close its bank accounts when it goes belly up.

There has been no shortage of discussion around the conflict surrounding multiple generations in the workforce. Though much of this has been reactionary and focused on the negative aspects of generations, the tides seem to be turning. More and more companies are talking about the benefits of the various generations they have in their workforce.

We recently finished up the April-June 90-Day CFE Exam Challenge. Associate members joined with the intention to prepare for and earn the CFE credential in less than 90 days. We had a great group of participants, and we'd like to celebrate the 99 members who completed the challenge successfully.